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A busman’s holiday

I regard my trips to conferences such as the CELT Symposium ‘Writing, Publishing and Communication in Higher Education’ as a busman’s holiday. I get the chance to attend a great event while keeping an eye on how the event is run. This can lead to improvements in how the ICT in Education conference is run year on year. This was my first year attending the CELT symposium and it gave me lots to think about on the drive home, my time to digest the many ideas that assail me on such a day.

What I really loved about the day was the format of the workshop sessions. The 2 workshops that I attended (‘Using Social Media for Disseminating Research’ and ‘Writing and Designing course materials for open, digital and ‘flipped’ teaching and learning’) were 1 hour and 15 minutes long but the presentations themselves were probably only about 45 minutes. The remainder of the time was devoted to a discussion, facilitated by the chair of the session, where attendees were encouraged to share their experiences of the topic in question. I loved the fact that the presenters gave their presentations, but then you got a chance to hear how others were using the ideas, so you got many views, which completely transformed the sessions for me.

Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to go to the Pecha Kucha sessions – a presentation with 20 slides, each of which is shown for 20 seconds. At #celt12 the Pecha Kucha sessions had 6 presenters in each so it sounds like there was lots to digest in the aftermath. Mary Loftus (@marloft) gave one of the Pecha Kucha presentations which I was sorry to have missed as I’d love to see how the various slides were knitted together. Her slideshare can be found here and will give me a few links to investigate over the summer months.

The other thing I loved on the day was the intermingling of plenary and workshops and the variety of plenary sessions in both theme and length. Getting to hear a variety of people giving their take on the theme of ‘The Written Word – Writing, Publishing and Communication in Higher Education’ from the more theoretical through to the very practical made for a very interesting and inspiring day.

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2 responses to “A busman’s holiday”

Thanks for writing about your busman’s holiday, Pam! Apart from making me look forward to ICTEdu2013 even more, it made me look at the Pecha Kucha presentation Mary Loftus (@marloft) gave, which in turn made me look at Brené Brown on YouTube, and I’m hooked. Thanks again! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4Qm9cGRub0 is Brené’s original TedX talk on vulnerability, and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FZzGRdRt94 is the one where she talks about her experiences afterwards. Compelling watching!

Thanks Sabine,
I’m so looking forward to following some of these links over the summer months. I love events like #celt12 for the inspiration they give at a time when you can appreciate and reflect on them.
Pam.